Dragon Call (8 page)

She wondered whether it would fuck her and
flushed to the realization that she also wondered whether she would
enjoy it. These were not things she should have been thinking
about. She should have been trying to find a way to free herself,
but instead—

You would not enjoy it.

“Why not?” And, then—“Stop reading my
mind.”

The dragon didn’t answer. Not with words,
anyway. Instead, it drew her body up more; Cora’s knees left the
floor, and her hair swung forward to hang around her shoulders when
the rest of her body followed her knees.

She felt pressure against her entrance, but
it was gone a heartbeat later, and she fell to the floor. The sound
of a roar reverberated in her head. The pressure in the circle
intensified. Pain blossomed behind her eyes. Her skull felt too
small to contain its contents. Despite the pain, she realized she
was no longer being held down and scrambled away on her hands and
knees. When she felt grains of soil beneath her knees, she had
enough awareness left to cross it carefully in order to keep the
circle intact.

The pain in her head abated as soon as she
escaped the circle. Sunlight streamed through the windows,
temporarily blinding her. As soon as she could see again, Cora
bolted for Diane’s bedroom and slammed the door shut. She leaned
against it, breathing hard. She couldn’t hear anything through the
door, so she assumed the dragon had been unable to escape the
circle.

“Or you were just dreaming,” she whispered to
herself. She didn’t have the courage to open the door and look.

Her legs felt like rubber. She wobbled over
to Diane’s bed and dropped onto the edge of it, eyeing the phone on
the nightstand. Her initial thought had been to call Diane for
help, but with a door between her and the ritual circle, she
started to feel silly. Maybe she
had
been dreaming. Her
psychiatrist said the dragon dreams were related to the fire.
Nearly dying—no, actually dying—in a fire would naturally arouse a
deep-seated fear of it, and fears manifested in interesting ways.
She had been hearing dragon tales since birth. It was only normal
that the fire-breathing creatures would rear their heads to torment
her after a fire-related trauma. Maybe she’d be better off calling
her psychiatrist instead of her sister.

No sooner had she flopped back into the
luxurious satin nest and covered her face with a pillow than the
phone rang. Between the first and second ring, she felt the bed
shudder. Cora threw the pillow aside and sat up, afraid the
maybe-real dragons had gotten into the bedroom with her, almost
hoping that the impossible had happened and an earthquake was
rattling New York. She was alone in the bedroom, though. The phone
continued ringing but the bed didn’t move again.

Diane’s machine was set to pick up after four
rings, so quiet fell over the apartment again a moment later. When
the phone started ringing again immediately, Cora checked the
caller ID. She hoped for Diane, but the number was her
mother’s.

Any witch will do, she decided and picked up
the phone.

“Ma, I have a problem,” she said, foregoing a
greeting.

“Diane, are you alright?” her mother asked at
the same time.

Both women paused to digest the words
directed at one another. They started speaking at the same time
again.

“Cora, is that you?”

“Yes, it’s me. I have a problem.”

“I know. I could tell. That’s what mothers
do, you know, know when their children have problems,” her mother
said.

Cora grimaced. Miranda loved her mother’s
intuition only slightly less than she loved her daughters, and she
absolutely adored having an opportunity to use it.

“Tell me what you’ve done,” she practically
crowed. Cora imagined her hunting for her silver bowl in
preparation of a scry. Miranda used her Sight so infrequently that
she wouldn’t be able to find the traditional bowl. If Cora didn’t
hurry up and spill the story, it would play itself out in miniature
in some undignified plastic storage bowl.

“I don’t know if I’ve actually
done
anything.” Even as she spoke, the bed shuddered again. Cora watched
the alarm clock beside the phone vibrate toward the edge of the
nightstand. “Maybe caused an earthquake.”

“What? Of course you didn’t cause an
earthquake. Ah, here it is,” she announced. “Now let’s see.”

Cora abruptly realized she was naked, and she
dropped the phone to dive for Diane’s closet. She grabbed a black
satin peignoir from the back of the closet door and drew it over
her shoulders on her way back to retrieve the phone. Bone-chilling
terror came over her before she reached the bed. She stumbled over
a pair of Diane’s shoes and cracked her hip on the corner of her
sister’s vanity. A makeup mirror crashed to the floor, shattering.
Broken eyes glowed up at her from the shards; they were the same
eyes as those in the Chinatown shop window.

Careless of broken glass and bare feet, Cora
ran to grab the phone. “Ma, something’s watching me,” she panted
into the receiver.

“That’s me, and now I have to get another
inroad since you broke the first one. You really shouldn’t wear
black, darling. I know it’s touted as the in thing and some fashion
moguls swear that blondes look best in black, but it makes you look
washed out. Don’t you have anything blue?”

“You?” Cora choked. “That’s what it feels
like when you’re watching someone? My god…” Miranda drew a sharp
breath and Cora added hastily, “…dess. You scared me to death!
Don’t do that again!”

“You never tell me anything. I have to keep
an eye on you somehow,” Miranda huffed. “Right now you have bigger
problems. That circle is far too small, not to mention too thin, to
contain two dragons. What
were
you thinking? Where is your
sister? I
knew
you could do it, you know, it was just a
matter of coming into your own and finding your goddess. We’ll have
a party to celebrate your newfound power.”

Cora shelved the spying issue for another day
and asked, “What do you mean,
two
dragons? What do you mean,
too small? Diane’s with her girlfriend.”

“I thought she was seeing somebody named
Richard?”

“That was ages ago. She’s been with Alissa
for at least a year.”

“You girls never tell me anything.”

“Ma, can we focus? Dragons in my living room?
Not even
my
living room.”

“Well, it’s not unusual, or even unexpected.
We all call them eventually. I’m surprised you’ve summoned one
before Diane, to be perfectly honest. She’s so much more attuned
than you are.”

Cora couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
She didn’t know where to start asking questions, either, and she
wondered at the wisdom of keeping her mother on the phone instead
of calling Diane.

“Oh my,” Miranda said. “You should see this,
Cora. Doesn’t Diane have a cordless phone?”

Cora felt panic welling up in her stomach.
“See what? I don’t know.”

“See these two battling for dominance in that
little circle. Darling, I understand you’re confused and
frightened, but you can’t leave them to their own devices. They’ll
tear one another apart.”

She went to the door and opened it far enough
to press her cheek against the jamb and peek through the crack.
“Damn it,” she swore into the phone. “I can’t see anything from the
bedroom.”

“Well, trust me, it’s rather remarkable. One
is red, the other is white. I’ll need to review my dragon lore to
figure out what the colors represent. Oh my,” she said again.

“What am I supposed to do?” Cora hissed into
the phone.

“Traditionally, you’re supposed to, well, you
know. Mate with it. But of course nobody expects you to mate with
two
of them. There’s been some mistake.”

Cora closed the door firmly, went back to the
bed, and hung up on her mother. Before the phone could ring again,
she dialed Diane’s cell phone.

“I have a pair of dragons trapped in your
circle, and Ma is telling me I have to fuck them. Could you come
home please?” she said before Diane had a chance to talk.

“I’ll be right there.” The phone went
dead.

Chapter Eight

Cora wanted very badly to remain holed up in
Diane’s bedroom until she got home, but the next time the floor
rumbled, it didn’t stop for a full two minutes. She had to rescue
the clock before it fell off the nightstand entirely. Her mother
called back once, but Cora only answered the phone long enough to
tell her Diane was on the way and hung up again.

Remembering her mother’s admonishment about
leaving them together in the circle, she crept from the bedroom and
into the spare room to retrieve her cell so she wasn’t bound to
Diane’s bedroom phone. Frowning at the low battery—she could’ve
sworn she charged the phone not twelve hours ago—she called her
mother back.

“They’re going to tear the whole building
down from inside the circle,” she said when Miranda answered the
phone. “If I let them out, what will they do?”

“Well, they came to you. So they’re trying to
get out in order to reach you. That’s the way these things work if
you summon properly. A proper summoning ensures the targets are
sufficiently motivated to stay with their summoner instead of
gallivanting about in the world.”

“I doubt I did it properly.”

“You issued a mating call, Cora, and they’re
male,” her mother said dryly. “They’re sufficiently motivated to
remain with you. Go ahead and break the circle. They won’t go
far.”

“This is insane,” Cora muttered.

“Nevertheless, it must be dealt with. I’ll
remain on the phone with you if you’d like.”

Cora sighed, but she didn’t end the call.
Clutching the knot in the sash around her waist, she ventured
cautiously into the living room. The circle shimmered darkly as if
its circumference marked the boundaries of a force field. She
couldn’t actually see anything inside the circle unless she turned
her head and watched with her peripheral vision, which strained her
eyes. She caught glimpses of translucent red and white writhing
around one another. The motion reminded her of a whirlwind. While
she watched, the swirling mass rose up to slam against the ceiling,
then down to thunder against the floor. At least now she knew New
York wasn’t suffering an earthquake.

“You’re sure this won’t go wrong?” she
asked.

“Absolutely. Phillips women have been coping
with this for eons. It’s our equivalent to the average woman’s
first menses.”

Cora rolled her eyes and moved over to swipe
her foot through the circle. She held her breath, but nothing
exploded. The fury within the circle seemed to abate as the dragons
poured out into the room. Whereas they were intertwined around one
another while bound, now they wrapped themselves around Cora. She
trembled.

“I really don’t know how you managed this,
though,” her mother was saying. “You acquired the dragon aspects
themselves, but you didn’t get the men they belong with.”

Cora started to ask for clarification, but
she was beginning to feel stupid, so she simply nodded and
pretended to know what her mother was talking about. She was spared
further conversation by an incoming call on her mother’s end of the
line. The silence of being on hold was blessed relief.

Besides, she had bigger problems. The dragons
were wrapping themselves around her hips and legs like long, large,
affectionate cats. One of them hadn’t been affectionate at all,
earlier.
One
of them had been downright malicious. She’d
mention that tidbit to her mother and ask about it when and if
Miranda ever managed to return to the pressing matter of her
present situation.

The dragons were rubbing her legs with their
bodies, massaging her skin with the satin of Diane’s peignoir. She
remembered the brief, violently sexual encounter in the circle
earlier and squeezed her thighs together so hard her hips ached.
She realized that she was sweating nervously when a gust of wind
tore through the still-open window and raked its icy fingers over
her damp skin. Shivering, she crossed both arms across her chest
for warmth.

While she waited for either Diane to show up
or her mother to come back to the phone, the dragons became more
amorous. One, or both, figured out that it could get close to bare
skin by snaking beneath the hem of her robe. Cora whimpered when a
warm nuzzle teased the backs of her knees. She should have left
them in the circle to kill one another.

While one dragon paid homage to her legs, the
other targeted her upper body. Her nipples perked at a long caress.
She swore and hissed, “
Stop
that!”

A moment later, Cora heard voices at the
door. They were muffled, but female. Two different pitches told her
that Diane had brought Alissa along. Terrific, she’d wanted another
witness to this spectacle.

Once inside, Diane tossed her keys into her
bag and put her hands on her hips. She arched her eyebrows as she
took in the scene.

“I thought you said they were in the circle,”
she said.

“They’re obviously not interested in going
far, so it’s not a big deal that they’re out.” Alissa shut the
door.

“It’s a big deal,” Cora said. She flipped her
cell closed and severed the on-hold connection with her mother.
“It’s a very big damned deal. I’m pretty sure that if I spread my
legs enough to actually walk, I’ll be molested. You know, more than
this minor otherworldly feeling-up that I’m getting right now.”

“Isn’t that mine?” Diane asked, eyeing the
satin wrapped around Cora’s body. She sat her bag down near the
door and pulled a hair band from the pocket of her jeans, which,
Cora noticed, were actually cut to fit Alissa’s more ample
behind.

“I had to put something on, and your closet
was the closest thing I could reach. Is it really an issue that I’m
borrowing your clothes right now? Can we possibly be 14 again after
I’m out of this dragon-spirit twister cone?”